[MiniGo: “you can see where they went from the way the branches broke and bent.”]

[Me: “Ooohh.”]

 

I’m currently in the forest trying to track where the Blood Monkeys and the Hunters went. Why was I here even though my teacher Rue said to stay in the village? Well the chief told me to do whatever I want so I sneaked through the door at the gate. It was really easy actually since I wasn’t close to anybody like I was with Rue, Len, and the chief so people just let me go.

 

I’m now just a few hundreds steps from the villages while listening to spirits  about the tracks left by the creatures and the 2 people. Yes, 2 people, from the size of the  footprints and the pattern I could confidently say that they were Rue’s and Len’s. If we were to believe what the eaglewoman said then there should be at least 4 more sets of footprints, maybe they came from another path but that was unlikely because I saw the eaglewoman flying towards this area, or maybe the eaglewoman was lying and there was nobody coming to help us and somebody else spooked the monkeys, either way this is not a good sign. Other than those two sets of footprints I could only see the remains that monkeys left, the broken plants, the fruits and the animals carcasses. It seemed like they did make the place their camp for a few weeks. 

 

[Foxy: “the tracks for the monkey is still fresh, it seems that they did disappear at the same time those hunters said that they were starting the extermination.”]

[Me: “so they killed the hunters?”]

[Foxy: “not likely, there are no bodies around here or any pieces of armors and weapons.”]

[Me: “Ah, is that what the chief was saying about observing mundane things?”]

[Foxy: “Yes, but that’s not all, he also said that the monkeys would scream when they feel any threat however they just disappeared without any sound.”]

[Me: “So… can we save them?”]

[Foxy: “I don’t know. We better hurry.”]

[Me: “Right.”]

 

I used MiniGo power again to swing from tree to tree following the tracks left by the monkeys. Fortunately the current situation helped me in tracking them. Trying to track a monkey is almost impossible in this kind of place, but tracking more than 60 of them? Yeah it was really easy. Also unlike the Tarzan that I saw on TV swinging from trees was actually pretty hard. Not because I needed to jump on branches and swing on vines, the branches and vines were actually pretty strong, it could hold my weight without any problem. The problem was there are a lot of things living on the trees. Snakes, ants, spiders, and other things that would bite me without a second thought. Then again it surprised me how quick I was at adapting in this kind of situation, maybe having the spirits to talk to helped.

 

I kept swinging and jumping as we went deeper inside the forest until I came to a fork on the road. Not an actual road of course, what I meant was I found that at this point Rue and Len went to the left while the monkeys’ tracks kept going forward. 

 

[Me: “Are they lost?”]

[Foxy: “Unlikely dear, I think they found the nest. They went to the left to circle around the nest. You don’t want to just appear inside the enemy’s front door.”]

[Me: “That makes sense. Now we have three options, follow Rue, follow the monkeys, or go right and circle from the other direction.”]

[Foxy:”how about a fourth option? Just go between the path the monkey went to and the path that Rue wen to, then you can observe both.”]

 

And that was the decision, I’m currently going at the middle path which is actually not a path at all, we were still in the forest after all, I need to go through trees and other stuff. I continued while being careful about making too much noise until I saw something at the corner of my eyes. It was a monkey, but weirdly it wasn’t moving at all, it just stood on top of a branch with vacant eyes.

 

[Foxy: ”It seems that the witch is more careful than we expected.”]

[Me: “Monkeys Surveillance System.”]

[Foxy: “Yes, we need to be even more careful ourselves now.”]

[Me: “Right.”]

 

What a pain, now other than needing to be careful not to make any noises I had to make several detours to dodge the monkeys. I thought about just killing them but one wrong move and I would alert the whole forest so that wasn’t a good idea. Anyway, continued searching for Rue and the Witch. After a few minutes of swinging around later I could see some sort of smoke rising from between the trees.

 

[Me: “That’s it?”]

[Foxy: ”I think so.”]

[Me: “The weird thing is nobody ever found the witch. That place is oly a few hours away from the village.”]

[Foxy: “Seeing the intelligent behavior this thing had I won’t be surprised that it somehow found a way to hide its activity quite well.”]

[Me: “Hmmm… the monsters here is not that stupid then. How annoying.”]

[Foxy: ”sorry we cannot help you directly.”]

[Me: “It’s okay, for me just being able to talk to someone in this kind of situation is a pretty good help.”]

 

*BOOM**CRACKLE*

 

When we were busy discussing stuff an explosion followed a a huge lightning appeared at the place where the smoke came from. I hurriedly sped up to the place, this time not even bothering to hide from the monkeys. At the area of the explosion I could see a huge charred crater. The crater was really big, the diameter was about the length of two buses I think, inside the crater I could see the remains of various things that got caught inside the explosion. I was about to celebrate a job well done by Rue and Len when I saw something moving near the center of the crater. It was a giant green wolf that had many quills on its back like a porcupine, not only that it was big, more than 2 meters on its four feets. It appeared to be hurt as it was limping around but other than that the wolf was still doing great compared to the other things that got caught in the explosion.

 

[Me: “Something survived that giant explosion?”]

[Foxy: ”A Hedgewolf. A type of wolf that is really resilient to any kind of magic it seems.”]

[Me: “You guys know about the monsters in this world?”]

[Foxy: ”Of course, we’ve been observing this world for quite sometime now.”]

 

Then why didn’t they give me more information and just sent me to this place without any preparations? I’ll just blame the frog for now.

 

[Me: “Where are Rue and Len then? Also where are the four hunters?”]

[Foxy: “Northeast. They are passed out because of the explosion.”]

[Me: “I see. Wait a minute. What about that monster then?”]

[Frog: ”Ya need to fight it.”]

[Me: “I... What?”]

[Frog: ”Look the Hedgewolf is getting closer to your friends.”]

[Me: “Okay, fine!!!”]

 

And that was how the first real fight in this world, no, the first real fight in my whole life started.